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{carrying you} {art/writing collab}

SAI crashed a lot and basically all I had to work with at one point was the hastily-made printscreen that I got, and also look at the time I have procrastinated this piece to death. this is what I have. sorry for the potato quality and blurry edges and shit.

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There’s a bunch of different things and techniques in this image from what I can see, but I like the choice of colors and the how calm the image looks as a whole. It is a bit small to tell whats going on, but thats for further discussion in other sections.

Form:

There’s only one pokemon in this image and its Lapras, making it the main focus of this piece! From first glance, there’s no mistaking its shape and its pretty distinctive ears and shell on top of its back. The major parts of its anatomy are present despite the cut off towards the bottom right of the image. However, one of the more concerning things are the missing colors, such as around its chin area and down into its neck. Based on the angle, it is possible to see some parts of it on the top of its neck. Understandably, the yellow would not be seen around the chin, belly or underneath its fin’s due to seeing a slightly slanted top view of it. In addition to that, Lapras also has dark blue spots around its main body, neck and face that are not present on the body anywhere in the image. Those two things are pretty distinctive to its design and would be recommended to include or edit in, even if they they seem too important. I realy like that you attempted to shape the shell on its back, but the shape is admittedly still a little off around the outer edges and in the center.

There were a couple of things off, but the overall form and sihoulette of Lapras looks pretty good. In the future, I hope you remember to save often when it comes to art. Programs are notorious for crashing, especially if you just so happened to finish a tough section. Typically, I will save after a sketch stage, several times during lineart stage, after i flat color each separate piece, multiple times while shading and lighting and so on. Thats so the minimal work I lose is usually easy to make up and you can avoid issues like these. In any case, there was one other form in this image, which appears to ve that of a human girl if I’m not mistaken. The other thing I’d like to mention before looking at her, is to try to get canvas’ at least 500x500 and above, the bigger the better for us to see details and help you.

Anyway, from a distance, its actually really hard to tell, that the character right here was a little girl, and even harder to tell what she was doing. I had to zoom in about 300% to get a better idea of what was going on. The knees from a distance, for example, look like a head, so size of your canvas is very important when we’re gauging details. From what I can see however, the form looks actually really good, though admittedly, it also looks like a cutout of a photo. There are strange looking edges around areas like the feet and legs that appear like it was cut out from another image. It’s pretty hard to comment on this before of it, but I’ll go into further detail later.

Background/Foreground:

There’s a few different elements within your background that helps bring this scene together, but the biggest part of it would have to be the water. Now, typically people tend to color water blue, as that’s generally how it ‘appears’ to look when we see any large body of water. The water itself, however is clear and is merely reflecting the color of the sky in the majority of cases, which is typically blue in the daytime on a clear day. The light sources don’t appear to be too strong overall, so Im assuming there’s an aurora borealis going on, which would explain the range of colors in the water Lapras is swimming in. It’s really nice to look at, though i feel the colors should be a little less opaque then they are. The colors show still show, but you’d want it to look closer to blue anyway, as even with an aurora borealis, most of the sky is still going to be blue, which would be reflected in the water. Speaking of the water, you have these shapes that look like confetti floating about in the water and on Lapras. I’m not sure what they’re meant to be, but I’d imagine it has a link to the story this is based off of. It is pretty though, I won’t lie about that, but I can’t be sure what it is.

The other part of the background is the pier that sits at the top of the scene. In comparison to the girl and Lapras, it appears to be a bit flat and stands out with the thicker lines you’ve used. All the lines are uniform and the pier itself is drawn well, though typically pieces of wood will typically have some form of texture to them, such as this for example. There are patterns similar to that you see on trees and nails to show where the wood is nailed down to the pier. The same goes for the pillars that are holding it up above the water. It just adds a sense of realism and detail, even if you’re leaning towards a more cartoony style. Admittedly, thats a bit hard to tell in this scene, but its food for thought.

Line:

The lineart used throughout the image is pretty neat and I am able to distinguish between different parts of the piece. The lines on lapras are thin, neat and clear. The same could be said for the pier, but there are places, notably as it hits where the water where it just ‘disappears’. That can happen in deep, dark waters, but since we can clearly see a lapras through it, it would make sense we’d be able to see the pillars extend down into the water. On the right, we can even see that the lines weren’t connected all the way to the top of the pier, leaving it open, which can happen. The solid color of brown inside of those lines help to kind of fool our eye the line exists when zoomed out.

While the pier, lapras and the water are clearly defined, its hard to say for the girl in the image. We can see where she is, but the lines around her are blurred and dark. This is a close-up on the girl you have depicted here. I’m not entirely sure what is going on, as we have this strange blue over the to of her, and there’s a strange black glow around the entire body and onto the pier. In some areas like the hands, it’s blurred out or slightly transparent, which shouldn’t be happening with a solid object. As the rest of the picture is lined clearly, it would have fit the scene better to have this lined in the same fashion to bring unity to the piece.

I still want to say, i really like how clean and well done the lines on lapras and the pier were. It’s not always easy to get such clean linework done and you did great on the two of them! I do hope to see future work from you if possible where you get to show off that fancy linework.

Technique:

There’s a couple different panting techniques going on in this image, some of them transitioning better then others. I’ve spoken already about the colors in the water and they transition pretty well between colors, although when you’re moving away from your yellows and greens into the blue, there’s a clear line of distinction between them when it should flow naturally into the next set of colors. One way to do this is by using tools that help blur the colors or even using a brush with the next color, lowering the opacity and then coloring inbetween. It should start creating a color in-between the two, and from there you can color pick that new color with your low opacity brush and blend it into the other colors on each side. Really, you’re trying to create a smooth gradient in-between these colors since such stark colors and lines aren’t present in water. This can also be used in the area with the purple as well, although id recommend lighting up on that purple as well.

Another thing in regards to the water is around the pillars, but i’d like to first comment on the lines drawn to show the movement of the water. They help add to the picture and i like that we can see them over the parts of lapras that may be under the water. It seems you also tried to use that technique on the water by the girl’s hand, but inside of a lighter colored, used a very visible green instead. I understand you have some green mixed into the colors in the water, but as the water itself is transparent, the ripples given off by her hand would not shift that much in color. In fact, you could have made it look like part of her hand was under the water by using a brush with the color of the water there. By dropping the opacity, you could color a little over the fingertips of her hands to create an effect where it looks like her fingers were dipped in the water. From that point of contact of the water, you would then add light colored ripples like you did prior and it would have looked a lot better as it would look like she was interacting with the water and by extension, Lapras. It would be bringing the two separate entities together, therefore telling a story and unifying it further.

Continuing with the talk on water, I mentioned the pillars that actually hold it up over the water. As mentioned before, water is transparent, and being that its so lit in this area, you’d actually be able to see the pillar going down underwear the water and either into another surface or far enough down where we wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. I would have recommend making it look like it went into some sand or dirt underneath the water. If you don’t feel too comfortable with that you could even cover around it with some simple grasses or plants like kelp or seaweed. The right pillar on the other hand is find as it is obscured from view by Lapras. Still, there is another thing about them in regards to the water I’d like to speak about. Around each pillar, you have a mixture of brown into the water as though it was coming off of its surface. The wood would not dilute the water with any brown like that, and in fact, the yellows and greens would have surrounded its base instead. What you could have done was tried adding a reflection or just a slightly different colored shadow into the water. For reflections, in case thats what it is, I would recommended copying the layer or area of just the pillar, flipping it in your chosen direction, dropping the opacity of the layer itself and using transformation tools to warp the image a bit onto the water. As its done now, it looks like paint coming off of the wood. Speaking of shadows, the pier should be casting some sort of shadow underneath itself into the water, not just from its pillars.

Moving on, I’d like to say I really like the shading you’ve done on Lapras. You’ve used a nice range of blues and purples that blend very well into one another and done so in a way to show where you believe light would hit and what would be in shadow. This is especially well done on the head and down into the neck area and again around its back. Despite how well done this was, it appears to ignore the lighting that would be given off from the water a bit and its hard to tell exactly if only the top of its shell is above the surface. Based on the ripples, the head would have to be under the water, the top red fin and what looks to be half of the right. It shows some weird choices on which parts are underwater and which above, making it hard to judge on what the light is going to hit directly or under the water. This does bring me to the point about Lapras’s colors however, whereas its generally a turquoise color in comparison to the dark blues and purples you’ve shown. This isn’t to say they don’t look good, they do, but as Lapras doesn’t appear to be too deep into the water, the colors would be a bit closer to its official art. Two quick things as well, would be that the eyes are missing color, as those would continue to show underwater. The horn shape is also off as its less pointed and more rounded off in comparison to its art, just something I missed to mention in the form section.

The last thing i’d like to mention in regards to Lapras is the shell. It looked like you attempted to take a more 3D approach from what I can tell, based on how its shaded, however the protrusions from its shell are more rounded, the same issue with the horn on its head. As this is from above, you’d naturally see less of them affecting its silhouette, but as they are pointing diagonally, it would be possible to draw them in as outlines. From those outlines, you’d be able to use lighter colors in a circular shape as seen here to create those protrusions. Around the outer part of its shell, you have what seems to be a black color. Im not too positive if this is meant to be a shadow, but in art, generally you actually don’t want to use the color black or white. If you wanted to create a shadow here, you could color pick the darkest color on the shell thus far and color pick something a bit darker with perhaps even a shift to add maybe a purple or blue just slightly into the color. Color picking in this sense helps to bring, again, unity to a subject.

Quick, before I move onto the girl, I’d like to bring up again that creating a texture on the wood would have added a lot to it. You have a nice base of shading and highlights on it already, although some of the pieces, especially the thin sides facing away the pier, could use a bit more of it. Another thing to keep in mind would be that, for piers like this, wood would not be entirely uniform. Some might be a bit shorter, thinner, or have chips on the sides, just to create some diversity in it if you should so choose. It’s little details like that, that really add to pieces where the level of difficultly is higher.

Last but certainly not least is the second major subject of this image, the girl on the pier. This one is admittedly a bit hard to make judgements on, as its so drastically different from the rest of the image. Zooming in, I can see most of the details, but a lot of it is extremely exact and a bit strange. It seems like photo-quality versus the drawn out in the rest of the picture and that makes it hard to actually curate. Even staring between your tip and the finished version, there are noticeable difference between the pose, clothing and angle of the legs and feet. From your tip, i can also clearly tell she is suppose to be holding an umbrella, where as, in the finish product its a blob of color. I’d admittedly, like to see more on the process, but Im aware you lost a lot of your work in the first place.

Overall:

Overall, there was a lot going on in this image, much more then it lets on in a glance and it was interesting to really look at and study what you have here. With that said, Im going to have to score this a 45/65, unfortunately leaving Lapras not captured. There was a lot of things going on here and has this been your original file, a lot of those very things i mentioned, such as blending the water, changing the horn shape, adding the shell protrusions, and some other stuff would have very much been possible. This had a lot of potential, but i also realize it would practically call for a redrawing of the piece. It could be possible to fix this stuff, but that in itself would be a lot of work, as you’ve be adding in and painting on top of done work just to get it to look right. I shall leave the decision how you want to go about this up to you should you decide to take another crack at it.

if you go the redraw route, its very possible to scale up this drawing and redraw the lines on top so you don’t have to figure out posing at the very least. I hope this doesn’t discourage you from the second as I’d enjoy to see what other works you’d bring, hopefully with your program shutting down on you constantly.

"Like the sea? Want to sail across the ocean to the end of days? Want to bring prosperity to the world?"
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